zlacker

>>BellLa+(OP)
Check out this prescient article from 2017, when the ban was lifted:

Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic...

Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, called review panels “a small step forward.”

Recent disease-enhancing experiments, he said, “have given us some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.”

Therefore, he said, he hoped the panels would turn down such work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...

>>missin+H81
I don't want to diminish the work of "epidemiologist"'s but they aren't virologists. They're ultimately specialised statisticians and shouldn't have any say in how or what research is carried out.

>>teh_kl+wi1
Only a virologist should tell another virologist what to do. Got it.

>>djenen+Ti1
Nope, a panel of virologists and related researchers with the same scientific understanding in the field should make these decisions.

>>teh_kl+5j1
It's ok to have wishful thinking. Plenty of grants include virologists and epidemiologists, so your proposal isn't practical.

>>djenen+Rj1
Sure, they could provide anecdotal input based on past outbreaks, but they don't have the biological expertise to decide solely on what research should or could be carried out.

>>teh_kl+hk1
Anecdotally, that's not my experience with epi people. A fair few come from a bio/medicine background with a sufficient amount of experience in wet lab and theory to be considered a 'double threat'. Choose your own team.